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jerryasher writes "In a leaked memo, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin discusses 'the jihad' to prematurely terminate the Shuttle and what that means for the International Space Station. One implication: there may come a long interval when only our Russian Allies are aboard the Space Station. Add that bit of irony to your new cold war kit and then wonder why Griffin discusses why we wouldn't sabotage the Space Station, and how and why the memo got leaked in the first place."

People keep complaining that the war in Iraq costs the US multiple billions, but why doesn't anybody take into account the profits that America receives from the captured oil fields? Somehow, I suppose the occupation of Iraq must be profitable after all, otherwise it would only be logical to withdraw troops from there. Same for Afghanistan.

Disclaimer: I'm not a US resident and might not understand what's happening under the hood of your political machine.

Since the Iraqi oil reserves currently belong to American (and some British) oil companies, the Iraqi government's profit comes from taxes imposed on the said companies. This way, US oil consumers buy it from US oil producers at market prices.

Iraq exports oil to Europe and Japan as well. If this is the case, these parties are actually paying the US companies, too.

Well, some American companies are certainly making money off of the whole thing. It's just that the money isn't coming from where you think it is. Let me clarify. This isn't a war where the USA is looting Iraq (they've done a lot to that country, but looting isn't part of it). This is a war where one segment of the USA (the military industrial complex) is effectively looting the rest of the USA. And their government seems to take turns being too oblivious, evil, or simply too incompetent to do anything about it.

The first words spoken by the next President after being sworn in this January and looking at the real numbers: "What the fuck is this shit?"

Regardless of whether McCain or Obama is the name of our next Prez, I think there will be some pretty serious sicker shock when they start to get briefed about internal WH matters and become privy to the actual degree of incompetence, malfeasance, and fiscal irresponsibility that awaits them. It makes me think of JFK's half-joking, half-serious response when an interviewer asked him early in his presidency what surprised him most about the job. "I think what surprised me the most was finding out that things

You can blame Bush as much as you want for the Fannie Mae debacle, but if you actually have been following the issue for twenty years, you would find in the Op Ed web pages of the Wall Streetn Journal a steady stream of Republican voices arguing that the finances of these two institutions are basically crap and have been that way for decades. Democrats have resisted any sort of legislative effort to bring reform to these two agencies. In fact, if you look at whose donating to whose campaign you could see t

Far be it from me to question the impartiality and objectivity of the Journal's OpEd (web) pages, but this is basically bollocks.

You can see the same in Financial Times as well, and they have hardly been supportive of the Bush administration. Yes, yeah and verily, Dems put up the shields for sloppy accounting at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It goes all the way back to when Raines was in there.

What Democrats have been resisting is efforts to deregulate Mae/Mac even more. Given how well deregulating the rest

The first words spoken by the next President after being sworn in this January and looking at the real numbers: "What the fuck is this shit?"

This is one reason why I think that our next President will be a one term President. He's either going to have to make hard choices that wind up being unpopular (thus causing him to lose his reelection bid), or he won't make the hard choices and will conduct business as usual as things get worse (thus causing unpopularity and a losing reelection bid). I honestly feel

Because the problem is so large, and such an emergency, that it/must/ be dealt with right now. Word is that that without the bailout, we had two weeks before the shit hit the fan.

It's true what's been said, that Fannie and Freddie were "too big to fail." Failure without a buyout would have caused...utter chaos - literally runs on the banks not seen since 1929.

And I'm not kidding about criminal lack of oversight. We already know the books were cooked over there to make things look rosier than they were.

The CEOs of Fannie and Freddie lost their jobs because of that. BFD. They probably deserve jail time, but I won't hold my breath.

I lived through the RISDIC crisis, and this is the same stuff, just writ REALLY LARGE. 9 percent of all home loans, nationally, in arrears or in default? What? Here in Rhode Island, it's 32 percent. Apparently that's for real, and this stuff has just started. Trust me, this has just started.

It's true what's been said, that Fannie and Freddie were "too big to fail." Failure without a buyout would have caused...utter chaos - literally runs on the banks not seen since 1929.

...which wouldn't really be all that bad from a Republican perspective. After all, those banks rolled their dice and took their chances, right? Where's the incentive for responsibility if we don't let anyone pay the piper?

But wait...I remember something else happened in 1929...what was it? Hmmm...Oh yeah! Americans got a good

"It is to try to help avoid a financial market crash and the economy from plunging farther and more quickly into the shitter."

Oh, I know. I know too well. We had no choice.

Read my previous message.

This is the result of out-and-out fraud. However, while I live in a country where we have the highest per capita rate of imprisonment, the people responsible will never see the inside of a cell. Not even for a second. Trust me on this. We jail potsmokers instead.

When the banks wrote the mortgages and held them, they were less likely to give money to unqualified buyers. When they were allowed to repackage the debt and sell it to other corporations, to no one's surprise, everyone got greedy and started trading the debt.

I like certain libertarians ideals, but the fact is that regulation is to industry what police are to neighborhoods. If you take a cop off a beat, crime will go up. If you take your eyes off corporate shenanigans, they will go up. This has been obvious from the days of Enron. What we need is reasonable regulation with national standards, state enforcement, and some new laws against the revolving door between business and government. There should be a separation of business and state, for the sake of both.

Of course, you can always argue that the fact that there was regulation that was removed led to the crisis. But you'd be wrong.

When the feds weren't "encouraging" them to lend to "minimally qualified" homebuyers, they were less likely to. As usual, "deregulation" was a farce that just meant the government shifted their influence somewhere else.

Of course, you can always argue that the fact that there was regulation that was removed led to the crisis. But you'd be wrong.

Or you could argue that the problem is the return of regulation just in time to socialize the losses. The money that was lost due to piss-poor loan underwriting ought to come from those who took the risk of investing in piss-poor underwriting.

Instead, just in the nick of time, our tax dollars jump in to save the day for the people who unwisely chose to invest in piss-poor underwriting.

This whole idea of "too large to let fail" is the unholy love-child of pro-business 'conservatives' and pro-command-and-control 'liberals.' Its like they took the worst characteristics of each group and decide that those were the ideals by which to run our current government.

Of course, the losses are getting "socialized" one way or the other, if you count "socialized" as meaning "borne by nearly everybody (say 95%) in society". If you count "socialized" as "borne by everybody (say 99.9%) in society" then that's still up for grabs.

What has become increasingly clear over the last few years is that the major structural impact of globalization on the US economy amounts to this: manufacturing has been moved to China

"If you take your eyes off corporate shenanigans, they will go up. This has been obvious from the days of Enron."

No, it's been obvious since the days of Teapot Dome, if not earlier. The corporation has been crooked since the invention of the corporation. The manner in which a corporation is legally required to be run can be mapped 1:1 with the way a sociopath behaves.

I think the problem was not that we bailed them out, but that we bailed BOTH of them out.

It would have been an object lesson had the feds let one of the two fail completely, with all of the reprecussions, and saved the other.

Instead of letting people see how bad it could have gotten, and let the unlucky lenders who couldn't get their repackaged debt bought by the surviving company fail, we're going to have a long and painful slide as everyone waits for the next shoe to drop.

There will be more banking failures, but my fear is by then there won't be any free capital left in the US to reinvest and reinvigorate when the whole process winds up - we'll have used it all up waiting, just like the Japanese did after their banking/real estate disaster in the early 90's.

I'm wondering how much of this is due to people not wanting to face up to the fact that they're holding on to worthless paper (much as the Japanese refused to let companies go bankrupt), and how much of this is due to recent changes in the bankruptcy code, pushed forward, ironically, by the finance companies...

When the banks wrote the mortgages and held them, they were less likely to give money to unqualified buyers. When they were allowed to repackage the debt and sell it to other corporations, to no one's surprise, everyone got greedy and started trading the debt.

And then the idiots who took out loans they couldn't afford file for bankruptcy, and the banks that stupidly lent them that money go out of business. That is not a problem -- it's the market fixing itself.

All these bailouts do is screw over me, as both a taxpayer and a person who otherwise* would be able to afford to buy a house!

(*I'm a college student, so I would actually be a good candidate for one of these ARMs: by the time it adjusted, I'd have graduated and be making enough money to pay for it. But nooo -- first there was the housing bubble and everything was way too expensive, and now that the market has corrected all the loans have dried up -- the irresponsible dumbasses ruined it for everybody else!)

Part of the point of this is that it takes an incredible amount of time and money to send something into space.
Adding one more flight will not be a huge issue, because there is a rescue flight scheduled for the last current shuttle flight. But after that to add a flight would be a ton of work. With the knowledge that the shuttle program was coming to an end the ability to make the antique parts that the shuttle flies on is diminished, as no one makes them anymore. (To give an idea of how old the hardware is, the navigation system runs on something like 512 K)
It would cost in the order of $400 million dollars per additional flight. Also, to speed up Constellation it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars per month, and even with expanded funding there is a limit to how fast it can be realized.
In short, everyone is asking for money, NASA included, and lots of people question how important manned space flight actually is.

My immediate reaction years ago to seeing that some parts of the shuttle run on 512K was... great! If it can get the job done with minimal complexity, then what is the problem? Why invite more loc, when it accomplished what was necessary for the job at hand?

With Putin doing his best Stalin imitation lately, it's moronic to trust the Russians to be a reliable stopgap until our new rockets and spacecraft are ready. We need to simply accept the fact that we'll be needing the Shuttle for a little while longer, and budget appropriately.

That would be akin to pumping money into the Wright Brothers in the hopes of getting the 747 faster. The problem isn't that SpaceX lacks cash, the problem is that they aren't anywhere near a booster to replace the Soyuz let alone a capsule to replace the Soyuz. (Yes, the Russians call the booster 'Soyuz' and the capsule 'Soyuz'.)

The Russians are reliable as long as we pay them to be. Slightly better than the shuttle's "reliable only when it hasn't exploded in the last x months" track record. The Russians would very likely extort some more money from the US but that's probably about as far as they'd go. Worse case is that the ISS is lost, I doubt the Russians want to pay to keep it afloat, which depending on who you ask may not be a bad thing in the long run (we'd at least be able to built the next one without being hamstrung by nee

We're talking about the ISS not ICBMs, please refrain from randomly changing the subject unless your desire is to amuse me with your incompetence. You know that floating pierce of crap that was mainly created to let multiple nations work together and has been heavily outsourced to Russia already?

The ISS was by design a joint project and otherwise idiotic design decisions were made for that reason. The Russians have provided support not only as part of the normal design but also during times when the shuttle fleet was grounded. The Russians also own part of the station and will own even more of it once it's finished (the European and Japanese likewise own other parts of the station).

If they US didn't want to outsource the ISS then they shouldn't have made it a joint project.

One of the benefits of the station is the symbol and fact of international co-operation. Words like "extort" and "hamstrung" are right off target. It's not like Russia is spoiling a US party. If anything, the party is only happening because of Russia.

You can not realistically budget the fact that alot the people that made parts for the space shuttle have already changed jobs because of a mandated stop in orders. Any company that exclusivly worked building components itself either retooled the machines, sold them off or more unlikely left them taking up costly space in storage.

You would need to wave one hell of a magical wand to reverse changing your mind at this point. Its along the lines of saying to 'Just use the same rockets.' to get to space and to the moon that were used previously before the space shuttle.

Except the capacity to do that was also mandated to end in order to bring online shuttle. Deja vu.

Well, what Russia did is small potatoes compared to what America's foreign policy has been for quite some time. They have attacked a country without provocation and have been occupying it for the past 5 years.

I think if the US set the example returning to a non-interventionist foreign policy and eliminating all barriers to trade it would export democracy and freedom much more effectively than the armed forces and the CIA ever did.

How can this be called the premature end to the shuttle program? Shuttles were an ill-conceived idea from the beginning and now they are almost 30 years old. Surely they should have been retired long ago.

It's a serious question since McCain has already said the Russians should be thrown out of the G8 Summit. How likely is he going to be to continue cooperating with the Russians or how happy are they going to be dealing with some one that speaks openly against them? The Cold War is coming back at a very bad time for the ISS.

"Premature"? The shuttle program should have been terminated decades ago when it was clear it wouldn't meet stated design goals, i.e. low cost transportation to orbit. The termination of the shuttle program is very, very post-mature. The only reason it survived is the number of jobs it provided in the right congressional districts.

The shuttle failed to meet design specifications as you state (cost is only one area in which it failed). But unfortunately, all our eggs are in one basket. Nobody did sufficient forward planning to replace the space shuttle... planning that should have begun no later than the day it first launched.

Nevertheless, you don't throw away the only tool you have, even if it is expensive and unwieldly. Granted, we should have had a replacement for the shuttle a long time ago. But we don't, so that means we fly the shuttle until we do!!!

Might the Russians decide to sabotage the ISS? How badly do they need us to keep the thing running? Sounds like they don't need us at all.

Here's a wacky idea so bear with me. Could the Russians "steal" the ISS? They have the capability to dock with the ISS but we will not (without their cooperation) between 2011 and 2014. That date of our being unable to reach the station may come sooner if Russia becomes even less "friendly" and the date we can reach the station might be pushed back because of technic

The PRC initially designed the Shenzhou spacecraft with docking technologies imported from Russia, therefore compatible with the International Space Station (ISS). The Shenzhou 8 unmanned space laboratory module, the Shenzhou 9 unmanned Shenzhou cargo and a manned Shenzhou 10 will be docked in late 2010 to form a first step small orbital space laboratory complex. This first step will allow China to master key technologies prerequisites for the following larger permanent space station. The Shenzhou 11 missio

Time is short. Senior NASA management is committed to beginning the destruction of the tooling used to construct the Space Shuttle's External Tank as early as next month. This destruction is completely unnecessary to support the current Ares 1 production plan because the floor space NASA plans to use is not occupied by the External Tank tooling. The only apparent objective of beginning the destruction of this $12-billion national asset next month, used by both the Space Shuttle and Jupiter Launch System, is to maliciously eliminate any competition to the current plan. In an attempt to put a halt to this unnecessary destruction of government property, the Senate version of 2009 NASA authorization bill sought to make this imminent action of the NASA administrator explicitly illegal. Specifically, the Senate provision directed the NASA administrator "to terminate or suspend any activity of the Agency that, if continued, would preclude the continued safe and effective flight of the Space Shuttle Orbiter after fiscal year 2010." Unfortunately, this provision, that cost us nothing to include yet wisely keeps our options open, was removed from the Senate-House conference bill just before the summer recess.

When Hernando Cortez arrived in Mexico, he ordered his ships to be burned. As there was no turning back, no options left open other than to proceed ahead, his men were incredibly well motivated.

I'm going to propose that having the shuttle program intact is possibly the biggest hindrance to advancement. As long as it is there, any viable alternatives are so easily canceled by Congress whenever they need an influx of cash by cutting NASA's budget, just as they've done dozens of times before over the last c

I'll take Griffin's assertions of context at face value and assume he thinks it's the right thing to replace the STS with Constellation.

He did, however, say the retirement of the STS was not based on engineering. I can see why he might say that.

The most incredible thing about the STS is the main engine, both incredibly amazing and incredibly problematic. The development of those machines as been long and winding. Here [enginehistory.org] is a nice summary of the problems they had just up to first flight.

The thing is, work on improving those engines has continued non-stop since 1972, and finally their performance and reliability is in the ballpark of where is was originally spec'd to be.

Mainly due to new fuel [spaceref.com] and oxidizer [spaceref.com] turbopumps.

And now they throw it all away. I just don't get it. It's too Arrow-esque for me.

STS was a good idea that became compromised. Almost all of the original concepts had the external tank as an actual vehicle itself with wings and the main engines mounted on it. The orbiter was generally on top or ahead of the tank/carrier in a safer position than it is on the STS.

Note also that in the two STS accidents the crew cabin emerged from the initial failure mainly intact. Both times. There is no reason why a detachable crew cabin couldn't be designed that would rocket away from a failing orbiter.

When I went down to Marshall Space Flight Centre last year, I saw it all laid bare. NASA is still stuck in the Cold War.

All the presentations were highly nationalistic, and the histories omit the Russians except as adversaries. The TVs at the cafeteria were set to Fox News. And in private moments, the engineers are still griping about the switch to metric units for the Ares rocket. Some of them don't even know what a Newton is!

I don't know why NASA continues to persist in this mindset, but it's not going to help them in their long-term goals.

Yeah, it's like defending free speech and having to stick up for Nazis and pedophiles. It's still a worthy cause in the abstract, but the specifics can take some of the wind out of your sails.

It shouldn't. Nobody wants to censor talk about mom and apple pie. The right of free speech only matters when it comes down to speech that somebody finds offensive. If you aren't willing to defend the freedom to speak about stuff you find offensive, then you didn't ever really believe in free speech to begin with.

Nobody wants to censor talk about mom and apple pie. The right of free speech only matters when it comes down to speech that somebody finds offensive.

Right.

If you aren't willing to defend the freedom to speak about stuff you find offensive, then you didn't ever really believe in free speech to begin with.

Bullshit. Freedom of expression is just one universal human right, and like anything, when it its in competition with other universal rights a balance is struck that effectively curtails it.

The right to free expression conflicts with the right to be free from harm. If your expression is causing harm then perhaps your expression should be curtailed.

The fact that most people accept a limit to free speech doesn't mean they "don't really believe in it", rather it means that they aren't single minded idiots that can't hold two thoughts inside their head at the same time. It means they can see the conflict between the ideal of free expression and the ideal of avoiding harm and have struck a personal balance, such that the imperative of protecting free speech becomes progressively weaker as we become increasingly in conflict with the principle of avoiding harm.

In other words, at some stage up around advocating the raping of children most normal people find that DESPITE believing in free speech, they are uncomfortable with the harm they perceive it to be causing, particularly when they perceive that its PURPOSE is to cause harm and has no value beyond that, and perhaps they even perceive that they are being MANIPULATED into providing protection for that harm by the perpetrator... why should we be critical that their resolve to protect that instance of speech has significantly been diminished, perhaps even to the point that they elect to curtail it?

The primary problem is that it's a lot harder to convince people to allow speech than it is to convince people to ban speech. Give people an inch and they'll ban everything that they don't like.

Myself, I always default to believing that speech should be free unless it's completely clear that the damage caused by the speech cannot be counteracted with more free speech.

On a related note, I wish that no one was allowed to say anything on TV without first taking a legal oath that what they say is true under penalty of perjury. (And they would further be prevented from adding "I think" or any other prevarications to their talk.) The Republican party would essentially be barred from advertising in any way.

Nevertheless, would I ever want to disallow their hateful damaging lies by actually passing a law that made it illegal for them to spew their economy and world damaging nonsense?

No. And honestly, it's a LOT harder for me to say that than it is for me to stick up for neo nazis or other hate groups. That's because, unlike neo nazis, the Republicans are actually successful with their hate speech. Seriously, they actually have people convinced they are a party of small government. (biggest lie ever)

No. And honestly, it's a LOT harder for me to say that than it is for me to stick up for neo nazis or other hate groups. That's because, unlike neo nazis, the Republicans are actually successful with their hate speech. Seriously, they actually have people convinced they are a party of small government. (biggest lie ever)

You know, I keep hearing that Republicans make up the party of hatred, and then I see all the hate being spewed toward Bush, McCain, and now especially Palin. I think a look into the mirror is needed here.

On the other off-topic topic of free speech, no one seemed bothered that a bunch of "women" in pink tried to prevent McCain from using his free speech rights. I'm reminded of the Code Pink groups of the 1930's. Only instead of Pink, they wore BROWNSHIRTS.

What made the Republican read like a Nazi convention is the fact that the crowds would cheer anything put out to them. If the tone sounded sufficiently 'American' they were on their feet cheering.

Whether it was hateful, sarcastic, dishonest stuff about the Democrats, Palin's pregnant daughter or McCain telling them that THEY had failed for 8 years. Didn't matter. As long as the inflection, followed by a cheering crowd, made for an impression of 'enthusiasm', they were cheering away.

You haven't made any partisan attacks. The GGP did. Your points are pretty much dead on.

As for your idea of tax cuts... a cut in taxes do not mean a cut in revenue. (See Laffer Curve) Government tax receipts since Bush's tax cuts have been at an all time high. Unfortunately, government spending is at an all time... er... higher. I think that McCain looked at the numbers and said, "Well, what do you know! Tax cuts can mean more revenue." and changed his position. Besides, an economic downturn, or mor

If your expression is causing harm then perhaps your expression should be curtailed.

But who gets to choose this? I think Madonna should be able to screw around with a crucifix on stage. If you are offended by this, join the club. If you think it "interferes with your natural rights", then you are way, way, too delicate.

Sorry, but unless someone is put in some kind of actual and direct danger, I don't support other people deciding what is and isn't acceptable speech... "Fire in a crowded theater" being the classic example.

In the example of advocating the raping of children... does anyone actually advocate this? I think you chose an example with a "think of the children" element so that people wouldn't disagree. That aside, what about a website advocating lowering the legal age of consent to, say, 17? How about 14? How about 9? Too young? Too old? Are you going to throw the book at the guy running the 9-year-old site but not the 14-year-old site? Why? Because you think one is "rape" but not the other? Who gets to decide? What about other cultures with different ages of consent? Are they rapists?

Conversely, let's say I put up a website advocating raising the age of consent to 21. Here I have a website intent on stripping millions of their legal rights... Isn't that harmful?

The right to free expression conflicts with the right to be free from harm. If your expression is causing harm then perhaps your expression should be curtailed.

No it does not, and to claim otherwise is to make a false analogy, just watch as you do it:

In other words, at some stage up around advocating the raping of children

You should rape children. GO! Do it now! You will really like it!

Harm is not caused by speech. Harm is caused by physical action. People like you who falsely claim to believe in freedom of expression are just conflating the two because, like all censorship, it is easier to identify and squelch speech about harmful actions than it is to identify and stop individuals who actually commit those actions and cause actual harm. You get the warm fuzzy of appearing to do something about a problem with high emotional content without all the cost of actually making a real difference.

By the way, bonus points for using "But think of the children!" as your example. I can't think of another meme that has been so widely abused to justify censorship [ala.org] with such little actual reduction in harm.

"Emotional harm" is not a sufficient justification to infringe on free speech. Grow a spine and realize that your "right" not to be offended doesn't trump my right to speak my mind. If you don't like what I'm saying then start shouting an opposing point of view or walk away. Don't whine about "emotional harm" and try to censor me.

and mental health

If your mental health is so unstable that you can't handle listening to free speech then you probably shouldn't be leaving your house. What was that old adage about sticks and stones?

You are talking to the wrong person. I am not one to be easily offended. I, however, am not the majority of society. I'd suggest that you spend a few days walking around calling every woman you see "cum dumpster" (to her face) including your time at work. Lemme know how that works out for you.

I'd suggest that you spend a few days walking around calling every woman you see "cum dumpster" (to her face) including your time at work

If I did that at work I'd be fired. Free speech != freedom from the consequences of that speech. Saying it elsewhere would probably get me slapped -- which I suppose would technically be assault but I'd deserve it (again, free speech != freedom from the consequences)

Do you actually think it should be illegal to walk up to a woman and call her a cum dumpster?

I'd suggest that you spend a few days walking around calling every woman you see "cum dumpster" (to her face) including your time at work

Free speech != freedom from the consequences of that speech.

This happened to me last week. Here I was, minding my own business calling some women cum dumpsters at the office, when my boss charges in and fires me. Then some random woman in the street starts slapping me about just because I gave her a colorful nickname.

I have since then hired a lawyer, and am now suing the government for allowing such a dangerous thing as this "freedom of speech" to exist. My lawyer said I could get somewhere close to 2 million, but unfortunatly the judge didn't approve when I called

"Emotional harm" is not a sufficient justification to infringe on free speech. Grow a spine and realize that your "right" not to be offended doesn't trump my right to speak my mind. If you don't like what I'm saying then start shouting an opposing point of view or walk away. Don't whine about "emotional harm" and try to censor me.

I'm sure you wouldn't mind if I followed you around, taunting you, calling you at work, leaving threatening messages, drawing pictures of your family getting murdered and raped and

In a statement issued after the Orlando Sentinel posted Griffin's e-mail, the space agency administrator stressed that the memo alone lacked the appropriate context.

"The leaked internal email fails to provide the contextual framework for my remarks, and my support for the Administration's policies," Griffin said the NASA statement. "Administration policy is to retire the shuttle in 2010 and purchase crew transport from Russia until Ares and Orion are available."

This basically validates the accuracy of the article's source material (the email), although it does insist that relying on the information in the email alone would not respect the context it was written in. In short, you should have RTFA (which contains a lot more information than the original email), and your comment is idiotic and baseless.

Hey, I heard that a retail 12 megapixel camera attached to a retail telescope can, from orbit, discriminate objects as small as fingerprints, and that advanced video analysis software can identify an individual by his gait if not by his impossible-to-mask facial features. Doesn't that make you wonder what the kind or money that launches stuff into orbit could buy? Could they scan you for cancer? Do I have your attention yet?

You heard wrong.
First of all, a 12 megapixel camera has trouble picking up fingerprints here on earth, unless the surface and lighting are conducive. Second, with a 1-meter aperture, the THEORETICAL limit for resolution would be picking up something 6 inches in diameter. With a 2.4 meter aperture (about the limit for optics going into space. It's the size of the Hubble, in case you were wondering), the (again, theoretical) limit of resolution that could be achieved is 3 inches in diameter.

Both of those numbers are, again, entirely theoretical. That's assuming you weren't looking through ~70 miles of turbulent, dusty atmosphere.

So unless the US Government beat the laws of electromagnetic diffraction and didn't tell anybody...

I was very young but I think the thing went like this: Flight. Study of safer flight. Assessment of safety of various methods of flight. Cost assessments of various safe methods of flight. WAR. What were we talking about again? Oh, yeah. Civil rights. Drug war. Popular topics. TV. Moonwalk denial "reality TV". American Idol.

It's not so much auto-focus as taking multiple pictures over time and eliminating the blur. Obviously slightly less useful for moving things than stationary things, unless you can define the movement accurately and input that into the algorithm (for example a car moving in a straight line at relatively constant speed)

I'm posting this not so much for you as for other people reading "automagic" and not understanding there's actually science for that magic:)

... they are openly trying to suggest mankind is mostly a bunch of morons.

Um... I hate to break it to you, but mankind IS mostly a bunch of morons.:-)...However, as you imply, there is a very small percentage of mankind that are the great minds that have put us where we are today.

The shuttle was supposed to be retired in... what? 1988? The damned thing was built when freakin' Jimmy Carter was president! If we don't retire the damned things we won't HAVE to worry about retiring them,because they will blow up and take the crews with them. Hell,if we are that damned desperate and need something to fill the gaps why don't we whip off another couple of the old Apollo designs. Surely it shouldn't be hard with today's tech to whip off a 40 year old design,and those "tin can on a tube" woul

I certainly agree [slashdot.org] that we should be more interested in reviving Apollo-era technologies. And, along with people inside NASA [slashdot.org] I certainly agree that they've got a real clusterfuck going by now and really could do lot better.

But, oddly enough, we're actually far less capable of doing things like building Apollo-scale systems than we were back in the seventies. Ya see, that's what happens when a country outsources all of its manufacturing for an entire generation. The manufacturing infrastructure gets torn ou

Oh please.... they said the same thing in the 50s when the Soviets launched sputnik. They were so far advanced we'd never catch up, their educational system was so much better we'd be slipping further and further behind, they had more resources, blah, blah, blah. How'd that work out again?

The truth is that when you look at the rest of the World most of it has problems at least equal to or even greater than our own. China has a growing demographic imbalance (because of one child and a preference for male

But, oddly enough, we're actually far less capable of doing things like building Apollo-scale systems than we were back in the seventies. Ya see, that's what happens when a country outsources all of its manufacturing for an entire generation. The manufacturing infrastructure gets torn out to make room for condos and nail salons.

You do realise that the US is still the world's biggest manufacturer? China may make all the simple cheap plastic shit, but you really underestimate how many high-tech planes, automobiles and weapons are manufactured in the US. I don't see China making dreamliners or F22s.

The shuttle was supposed to be retired in... what? 1988? The damned thing was built when freakin' Jimmy Carter was president! If we don't retire the damned things we won't HAVE to worry about retiring them,because they will blow up and take the crews with them. Hell,if we are that damned desperate and need something to fill the gaps why don't we whip off another couple of the old Apollo designs. Surely it shouldn't be hard with today's tech to whip off a 40 year old design,and those "tin can on a tube" would be a lot safer than trying to send up Jimmy Carter era junk that was supposed to be retired while Reagan was president. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

So let me get this straight:You want to retire equipment from the Carter era and replace it with equipment from the Kennedy-Johnson era?

Who said anything about safer? I'm sure they'd be able to find plenty of very stupid people that would get on if the odds were even only 1 in 3 of coming back. I'm talking about COST. As in another couple of failures and we won't have to worry about it anymore because NASA will end up getting its plugged pulled. Not to mention I don't want to know how many hundreds of millions were spent of the cleanup and investigations of the last 2 shuttle disasters.

If NASA said they could strap rockets on a 1976 Pinto and use that for the next launch vehicle,would you ride in it?

Yes. That's an unreserved YES! If they think it's got any chance of making orbit and they'll have me - I'll go!

And if you're too much of a Nancy to stand the risk, well, there's five billion more where you came from. Stay home. I'm sure whoever was picked from the thousands of volunteers will send you back pictures.

I strongly disagree with the sentiment that a reusable vehicle capable of spaceflight is something impossible to design.

I would agree, however, that the Shuttle should have been kept as a prototype and have gone through several more revisions since its original development. Furthermore, relying upon only a single vehicle type was a massive mistake for NASA and should never have happened... at least beyond the initial deployment of the Columbia and perhaps the Challenger.

Vehicles like the DC-X, Dynasoar, and a whole bunch of other failed NASA designs... many of which never even made it beyond a paper study, even though some of them had actual hardware built as well.... should have either received more political support or at least should have been deployed between the early 1980's and today. Unfortunately, the last manned spacecraft design to make it into space that came from a NASA engineer/designer was the Space Shuttle... and that was originally drawn up in the 1960's by Von Braun's shop in Huntsville even though Von Braun wasn't directly responsible for it. At least they were real rocket scientists who had flown actual hardware before they made that design.

I'm not particularly happy about the forthcoming gap in US manned launch capability, but your post really seems to come out of left field. It also jumps all over, from space based resources to tank destroying weapons to spying.

But what really threw me was the mention of Toynbee Tiles. You suggest that it would "behoove" me to find out about them. So I did. Behoove would suggest that it is of no small importance to learn more, but...

How is this relevant at all? The tiles are certainly interesting, but o

Dammit do we have to let the rest of the world own space? Did you hear? There's a lot more space in space than there is land on land. And more resources. There are entire moons made of hydrocarbons.

The thing is, once those people are out there they're not likely to be overly impressed with this idea that folks back on earth "own" their hydrocarbons. That sort of thing didn't work for us Brits and your colonist ancestors, and I wouldn't lay money on it working for the spacers and you.

The best you can hope for is that when they get there they'll still be friendly and let us go and visit from time to time. They'll be governing themselves in their own best interests, just like the rest of us.

I read somewhere that keeping the shuttle fleet active would up the percentage of failure dramatically since they're already in the process of decommissioning. I think it may be smart to just keep the shuttles as a reserve fleet, that way if the Russians were to stop playing nice (unlikely) we could still access the the space station. Only slight issue is that congress would have to fund this, else it'd eat into NASA's budget, the amount of funding needed is a relatively small amount, and a wise investment

How about stopping to make wars?Oh no, then those poor bankers could not sell credits and drive us to slavery and our government into obedience anymore... And there could actually be money spent on education and science (like, above 10% of the budget).This of course can't be! Because then people would start to think, and kill those power-greedy bastards in an instant.

Only if the parties maligned actually deny the claims made by those sources.

This is a double edged sword. On the one hand, anonymous sources can help uncover serious abuses, i.e. Watergate. On the other, journalists can and do simply make stuff up and attribute it to these "sources". I recall the case of one American journalist, whose name(ironically) escapes me at the moment, who was caught extorting his victim. He was essentially threatening to publish stories that while they would be damaging to the victim, would not create any legal "liability" for his publication. I'm sure anonymous sources are abused in this way.

Personally, I think that given the low standing of journalism as a profession, anonymous sources are at this time completely without credibility. Nowadays, the default assumption that must be made about any journalist and news story is that they are a spin doctor spinning a story the way their employer pays them to. Under such high G-forces, the delicate anonymous sources collapse under their own weight.

He probably is still in favour of shutting down manned space programs, but it's not his call to make. What he's complaining about is that he is expected to keep an American presence aboard the ISS but has not been given the tools necessary to do the job. If it was up to him he'd probably de-orbit the thing, but it's not.